After every round of international matches, FIFA usually levies fines to some of its member nations. A frequent fine typically given is to Latin American countries of CONMEBOL and CONCACAF for the "Puto" chant. Its like clockwork. Games are hosted, months later the same fine handed out to pretty much the same countries. Clearly the perfect deterrent for such a crime. Yet this week, we saw FIFA levy a 100k fine and a tournament ban to tiny Equatorial Guinea. You hardly see countries banned from competitions entirely but that's exactly what happened to the Equatorial Guinea Women's National Team and the 2019 Women's World Cup after fielding 10 non-eligible players for the Rio Olympics qualifying. These 10 women were all from Brazil, who had their own side competing in the same competition. Fielding 22 women from the same country under two flags from different continents is very much frowned upon in the eyes of FIFA apparently. FIFA drops the hammer and the national squad is buried for the next cycle of the event. You may be asking yourself, "Why do I care about Equatorial Guinea Football, Johnny?" Well you probably shouldn't until you find out the country has been doing this and being fined basically for every tournament across the board over the past 10 years. They can't get enough of using players from different countries. They love it.
Now the country we are talking about it is limited in terms of human resources.
They've got one million people and occupy what seems to be .00000001% of the land in Africa. Creativity is needed to get their football side on the map. Their original plan of fielding foreign players doesn't seem so ridiculous. Would FIFA care about that tiny country and who they register? Can't imagine they are going through each roster with a fine tooth comb especially in regards to these African minnows. The problem for Equatorial Guinea is that they don't seem to have plan B. Plan A is not working but they are going route 1 until they get over the line. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, but kind of the exact the opposite.
Einstein once said, continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. It may be harsh to say the federation in Equatorial Guinea is insane but Einstein was a smart guy so I won't be one to argue with him. On the other hand, some lazy guy once said snake it til you make it. I couldn't find the origin of that statement so this person MUST have been from Equatorial Guinea. The women's team has been fined before for similar violations and the men's team once had a game forfeited for not fielding a SINGLE play born in the country. Now there are rules that can allow that situation to be plausible but christ Guinea, let's mix in one huh? If you're Equatorial Guinea, you can't stop at this point either. They pushed all their chips to the middle of the table in running out Brazil 2.0. FIFA would never completely ban the entire federation. I mean hell, they took over the most bankrupt of bankrupt Greek federations and somehow lost them more money. Equatorial Guinea has enough oil money to pay off any FIFA fine so they are almost forced to keep having a go at this. Snake it until you make to the World Cup, you crazy motherfuckers.
PS. It would behove you to know that Equatorial Guinea is the only African country with Spanish as an official language. So now you learned something today. It will probably come up on Jeopardy one day and you'll have no one but your boy to thank for impressing your boyfriend/girlfriend. You're welcome.
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